Soccer|Fans in Cary, N.C., Protest as FIFA Scandal Hits Their Little Home Team

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Fans in Cary, N.C., Protest as FIFA Scandal Hits Their Little Home Team

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Fans of the Carolina RailHawks recently protested Traffic Sports USA's continuing ownership role despite its guilty plea to corruption charges as part of the federal inquiry into FIFA.CreditCreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

CARY, N.C. — Before a big match, the scene outside a Carolina RailHawks game is hardly unusual for a soccer team in second-to-last place in a second-tier professional league. At the entrance gate, interns at a folding table distribute discounted tickets bought online.

Inside the stadium, however, the mood is different. Protest banners rise from the stands, one quoting language from a federal indictment. The RailHawks, who compete in the North American Soccer League, have a loyal and vocal fan base, and those fans are not pleased that the team has found itself touched by a major international case of sports corruption.

Since May, when the United States Department of Justice announced organized-crime charges against global soccer officials, business executives and two corporations, RailHawks fans have faced an unlikely crisis. Their team, in this Raleigh suburb of about 150,000 people, is owned by a Miami marketing firm that, as one of the two corporations charged, figures prominently in the federal case.

The firm, Traffic Sports USA, and its Brazilian parent company pleaded guilty in May to wire-fraud conspiracy in United States District Court in Brooklyn; sentencing in the case is set for September.

The owner of both companies, José Hawilla of Brazil, admitted in the same court last year to bribing soccer officials from North and South America for decades to secure lucrative commercial rights to tournaments there, according to records unsealed in May. Mr. Hawilla agreed to forfeit nearly $152 million to the United States government, $25 million of which has been paid so far.

But to pay the outstanding balance, Traffic is putting some of its holdings up for sale, including the RailHawks. Savvy fans here know that, and they are spreading the word as if they stand to make sales commissions, hoping to divorce the team from admitted criminals in order to keep it alive.

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Members of the RailHawks and the New York Cosmos took the field for a match last Saturday in Cary, N.C.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

At a recent match, dozens of the RailHawks’ most loyal supporters marched around the stadium with whistles, drums, cymbals and a megaphone. They wore shirts emblazoned with “Traffic Out,” the same message displayed on an orange tarp spanning two parking spaces in the tailgate lot. One man waved a for-sale sign hoisted on a three-foot pole.

During the second half, the group put new lyrics to one of its familiar cheers. “We need an owner, oh yes we do. We need an owner, how about you?” they sang.

“How about you, Raúl?” Justin Mayo, 18, screeched from the front row of Section 309, referring to the star forward of the visiting Cosmos.

Should the RailHawks not secure a buyer this year, their roster could suffer, preventing the team from re-signing players or honoring existing contracts. “It’s something in our best interest to resolve as soon as possible,” Curt Johnson, the team’s president, said. “This isn’t enjoyable, but it’s an opportunity for us to educate people about this team, this market and the potential growth for professional soccer in this country.”

Officials for Traffic Sports USA declined to comment, as did Michael Bachner, the lawyer for Mr. Hawilla and the two companies.

Dan Torchio, a season-ticket holder since 2011, said he wondered if the team would survive, and he added that he would not buy tickets for 2016 until he could be sure. “It blows me away that this international scandal has hit my little home team,” Mr. Torchio said. “Every part of the soccer world has been touched.”

Mr. Johnson, the RailHawks president, said Traffic had kept to this year’s budget even after pleading guilty, and he called the company “supportive and reliable” in the four and a half years since it hired him, saying it had offered him relative autonomy.

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The RailHawks, who compete in the North American Soccer League, have a loyal and vocal fan base.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

But the force behind the team with whom Mr. Johnson spoke regularly was not Mr. Hawilla; it was Aaron Davidson, the president of Traffic Sports USA until May. He pleaded not guilty to similar charges that month and is under house arrest in Miami.

Mr. Davidson is closely identified with both the RailHawks — whom he visited here every few months, Mr. Johnson said — and the broader North American Soccer League. Mr. Davidson is credited with reviving the league, which had shuttered in 1984, after its popularity peaked with players like Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer. In 2011, it returned with a new business structure.

Mr. Davidson had proposed capitalizing on both nostalgia for the league and increased interest in soccer in the United States. He persuaded a group of owners from the United Soccer League, then the country’s second-division circuit and now its third, to defect and form a new league modeled on those in Europe and South America, according to nearly 20 people currently and formerly involved with the North American Soccer League.

The new league structure offered owners more financial control, allowing them to make business decisions rather than follow organizational mandates like those in other United States leagues. Its model featured fewer restrictions, including no salary cap for players, permitting teams to sign expensive stars like Raúl.

Mr. Davidson established the reborn league’s offices alongside Traffic’s own in Miami, where they operated until last year. At one point, Traffic had stakes in four of the league’s teams, of which there are currently 11.

With big ambitions to compete with the first-division M.L.S., Mr. Davidson steered the league as chairman of the board until May, when the scandal broke open and he was suspended.

“The Carolina RailHawks, the sole N.A.S.L. club owned by Traffic Sports USA, will continue to operate in the ordinary course of business,” the league said in a statement in May. Bill Peterson, the league’s commissioner, echoed that in an interview this month, adding that Traffic was actively seeking to sell the RailHawks.

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RailHawks fans, some wearing Traffic Out T-shirts, are not happy that an international case of sports corruption has jeopardized the health of their team.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

Traffic’s ties to the league, however, are more enduring than the league will readily admit, and they go beyond a single team.

The league is divided into two classes of ownership, according to records filed in a New York State court this year in an unrelated case. Class A stakeholders are team owners with voting rights, of which Traffic is one, while Class B stakeholders include those who invested a significant amount of money in the league early on; they have input on some decisions.

Traffic Sports USA, according to records and confirmed by the league, is the majority Class B stakeholder, meaning that it has paid the most money among the investors in that group and that it collects the largest dividend payment.

Jarrett Campbell, founder of Triangle Soccer Fanatics, a nonprofit fan group in Cary that has spearheaded the protests against Traffic, said he was frustrated at the league’s lack of transparency about the company’s continuing role with the team.

“We’ve seen no verification that Traffic’s as totally out of the picture as the league has tried to suggest,” he said. “And locally, unequivocally, they’re still paying our bills here.”

Mr. Campbell said his concerns with Traffic predated the scandal. He said he had long felt that the company was not investing enough in the team or paying its players enough. Last year, the team’s leading scorer quit to study for the law-school entry exam, and five other players declined options to rejoin the team.

But Traffic’s involvement in the far-reaching corruption scheme was the last straw, Mr. Campbell said. Since then, he has asked the league to strip Traffic of its team ownership and to assume interim control, a suggestion league officials have not acted on. The league has procedures in place to deal with owners who fail to fulfill financial obligations, but by all accounts, Traffic’s checks have kept coming.

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Some fans cannot wait to divorce the nine-year-old soccer team from Traffic Sports USA, which is said to be trying to sell the team.CreditTravis Dove for The New York Times

Meanwhile, Mr. Campbell and fellow activist fans have continued making noise, distributing fliers at the stadium and starting a website, raising the team’s profile — and their own.

At the recent game, they unfurled protest banners, including one that was painted with a sketch of Mr. Davidson’s face and the quotation from the federal indictment. “Is it bad?” it read, a question Mr. Davidson asked and answered about Traffic’s own business history at a meeting with Mr. Hawilla last year. “It is bad.”

Shortly after the Cosmos scored a third goal, the RailHawks’ mascot approached the group of supportive dissenters and draped its wing around Mr. Mayo, who had been waving a banner that read “Answers,” with a line through it.

Elsewhere in the stadium, more casual fans were taken aback by the team’s ties to the scandal. “You’d think if corruption at all touched the RailHawks, that they’d be really good and buying their way to success,” said Howie Perl, who moved to the area last year and was attending his fourth game. “It’s mind-blowing.”

Others were less surprised. Brandon Kelsey, a 19-year-old college sophomore who attends games with his 13-year-old sister, shrugged when informed of the link. “Soccer is a world game, and the world of soccer is small,” he said. “No matter what level, it’s a lot of the same people and the same sponsors.”

He motioned to the McDonald’s and Coca-Cola logos bordering the field.

Players for the RailHawks had no more insight than the fans did. “We just kind of kick the ball,” Wells Thompson, a forward, said after the game, the team’s third straight loss. “Obviously, we’re thinking about this situation, and we’re concerned about it, but you can only control so much.”

The team’s volunteer chaplain, Jonathan Van Horn, said that in spiritual counseling sessions, players had discussed the global scandal’s local impact. “From what they’ve been told and what I’ve been told, not a lot has changed at this point,” he said.

Some players were grateful not to have any further detail. “I don’t know what’s going on,” Austen King, a defender, said. “And I don’t want to know.”

Correction:Aug. 28, 2015

An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of a defender for the RailHawks. He is Austen King, not Austin.

A version of this article appears in print on , Section D, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Scandal Touches a Small Club. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe